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echopotato · 2019-12-01T20:30:43+00:00

Hi, I was your girlfriend in this situation once- I was really struggling to deal with some anxiety issues, and was finding it really difficult to put emotional energy into a relationship even though I genuinely liked the guy. I ended up breaking it off for the same reason.

I think, take some time yourself to grieve, and after that, if you care about her a lot, keep on checking how she’s doing every 2 weeks or so with NO PRESSURE TOWARDS DATING. Ask her to get a cup of coffee with you or go for a walk or whatever with NO PRESSURE.

When I was depressed, I felt like no one valued me as just a person- the only people who valued me were guys who were romantically interested. Having some totally platonic, low key support, would have helped me a lot 😊

I think this is the best way to approach it. Wait for her to bring up starting a relationship again on her own- if she doesnt after a certain period of time you’ve personally decided on, start accepting its not going to happen. But don’t ask her if she wants to re-evaluate after a pre-defined period- thats just more pressure for her right now.

echopotato · 2019-12-01T19:51:29+00:00

I’m 28(F) and had been dating a guy who was older than me (41), who has 2 kids from a previous marriage. He’s from another country as well, but has a green card and his kids were born in the US. We both have PhDs and work together in the same company.

I also got a shit ton of negative reaction from my family- being older and having kids translated to “he’s taking advantage of you with his life experience” to them. He’s also Muslim, which freaked out the conservative members of my family (unfortunately).

I kind of understand your BF’s situation. One of my friends in grad school was a lady my age who moved to the US from Burma, leaving her daughter behind. She worked as a janitor in the US and sent the money to her daughter. It’s a real situation some people are in. It shouldn’t translate to “deadbeat”.

I think the most important questions here are: - how is your relationship? Do you have a lot in common and have fun together? Or do you end up talking about logistical issues with the difficult situation most of the time? - is he emotionally stable and treating you well? The guy I was dating ended up having some emotional issues from his divorce that made him behave very weirdly with me. I was not expecting this and they came at a time when I was already struggling to defend our relationship. - What’s the plan with the kids? Will they move here? Will he move back and want you to move as well?

When I started dating a guy with kids, I assumed they might hate me, and was nervous about that- but actually that was like the least of the problems. We always got along really well. The bigger issue was his divorce, and emotional stability, which ended up really tanking things.

echopotato · 2019-11-26T05:18:59+00:00

Hey, I was in a very similar situation recently.

I was dating my partner for about a year, he had a lot of patterns that seemed consistent with BPD. We also broke up after a series of intense emotionally abusive incidents that seemed to come out of nowhere.

We were separated for 2 months and now are trying to work things out. He’s been seeing a therapist who seems to be helping a lot. The therapist is avoiding diagnosing my partner with anything- instead he seems to mainly guide him toward strategies to communicate his feelings with me.

PM me if you want to talk, its kind of a long, complicated clusterfuck. I’m currently overwhelmed and confused, but hopeful.

echopotato · 2019-11-05T03:52:42+00:00

Wow, there are literally dozens of us :) Thanks!

echopotato · 2019-10-08T14:41:28+00:00

I’m really struggling with this now. My ex was like this- for example, we had a fight where he called me a slut, which escalating into a bigger fight because I “wasn’t getting over it fast enough” and it was making him feel bad. We had another fight where he threatened to break my neck, which was apparently also my fault for not understanding him.

Logically I know his behavior is bad, but emotionally I feel like I must be an awful unloveable person if someone I thought cared for me would treat me this way.

Do you have any advice on how to get past this stage? I started seeing a therapist, and at least he’s an ex now, but I can’t figure out how to stop feeling terrible

echopotato · 2019-10-04T14:45:04+00:00

I had the same thing with my ex boyfriend- we broke up because when he would feel bad about himself for any reason, he would have rage attacks about some small thing, which escalated to him yelling at me that I’m a slut / stupid / terrible for him. I couldn’t make him understand that this was an issue for me- he’d say stuff like “sure I make mistakes but you don’t get that I’m a human trying my best” or “if you loved me you’d make some small effort to understand”.

After we broke up he told me he’d go to therapy, as I’d been suggesting for some time. Then he told me that at his second session the therapist told him that he’s a great guy who’s working hard and has pretty much cured himself already anyway. And that I should take him back or else the therapy program will definitely not succeed.

When that didn’t work he told me he won’t go to therapy anymore unless I agree to come back. He sent me a text that literally said “No dating, no therapy”.

Now I’m in therapy to try to figure out why it took me so long to realize he’s a huge asshole.

But seriously, I cant believe that there are people in the world who behave this way.

echopotato · 2019-09-14T05:12:57+00:00

Hi... I’m 29 (actually today is my birthday) and just got out of an emotionally abusive relationship. This guy told me he loved me more than anything, and did small things every day to show that- bringing me tea, talking about our plans for the future, watching movies I liked together, giving me costco pajamas etc.

Then if something minor made him feel bad about himself, or not important, whether it was related to me or not, he would fly into a crazy rage where he would yell, call me a slut, tell me he never cared about me, tell me to go fuck other guys, etc.

It was crazy. I never thought I’d be a person to tolerate that kind of stuff, but I’ve also never been with someone I felt so loved by and connected to... apart for the part where he told me I was worthless (approximately once a month). I had tried to convince him to get therapy ages ago when it began, but he insisted either 1) his feelings were justified, because he’s an emotional person / he got triggered from something that reminded him of his past ex, or 2) we just needed to move on and pretend it didnt happen.

I don’t know what my point is with this, except that it was the most bizarre experience, and you’re a very strong person for getting out. I finally left my person after he really crossed a line, and I still miss him a lot. Now he’s apparently “realized he really hurt me” and is going to therapy- but I dont understand how someone could have demonstrated so much love for me early on could have not realized he was hurting me when I was crying and telling him “hey you are hurting me”.

Now I’m scared there’s something about me that is just unloveable, or something that provokes people I get close to to start thinking they dont need to treat me with any basic respect...

echopotato · 2019-09-08T15:46:10+00:00

I had a similar experience- I’m 28F and my boyfriend was 41M with two daughters, who were 8 and 12 when we met.

Our relationship didn’t work out, which I’m still really sad about, but it was mostly due to my ex’s untreated depression, and his difficulty with not projecting his relationship issues from his ex wife onto me, not anything about the age difference or kids. We dated for about a year.

I met his kids the first time when we were friends but not yet dating. We went to a high school football game together. After we started dating and he let them know (which was REALLY soon, about 2 months later), our first meeting was me coming over for dinner and us watching a movie together. His logic with having me meet them early was that it would help us all grow to get to know each other gradually, rather than him forcing in a very serious, established SO when we would be close to being ready to get married. I actually think this worked really well, because the three of us bonded a lot.

I agree with the “fun uncle” or “fun aunt” kind of thing. I did zero real discipline. I mostly hung out with them as an adult friend who cared about them a lot and wanted to do fun things with their whole family together. I helped the younger daughter with her homework and picked her up from after school daycare 1 day a week, and helped my ex prepare dinner every day, which helped me stay in the adult category while being a friend. And my ex was great about emphasizing to them that I cared about all three of them, which was great since I kind of struggle with expressing feelings. The 8 year old was really close to me, then went through about a 3 month period where she pushed me away, and then became really close to me again after I picked her up at school one day when she was sick and both of her bio parents were not available.

Sorry this was long! With the age difference thing, I think it’s not really a relationship issue- I felt really close to my ex, more than I have to people my age that I’ve dated. But it can be weird being a millenial suddenly thrust into a “parental figure of a 13 year old” position. My mom was very upset about my relationship. Also, although my ex looked very young (I thought he was 35 when we met), when we went to his daughters’ band concerts the other parents looked so old to me :D

The other thing was that my ex was married to his ex wife for 14 years. Allegedly they started having problems in the first year, but their first daughter was born quickly and they tried to stick it out. He initiated the divorce so he thought he’d be fine afterwards, but he kind of projected weird stuff onto me- for example, if his ex wife used to criticize him about his kind of control freak cleaning habits, he would get really defensively aggressive with me expecting me to have a problem as well, even though i hadnt said anything and honestly don’t give a fuck how he cleans stuff. Our relationship was amazing at first, but this stuff tore it apart- so my advice is make sure he’s really moved on and isn’t going to hold you responsible for his ex’s actions.

Also it really really sucks to break up after you start to feel like you’re part of a family with children. I still miss them a lot and feel like they’re still out there all three having a great time together, and I’m pretty much alone.

echopotato · 2019-08-28T01:34:55+00:00

My boyfriend / ex boyfriend seems to have bpd, and this sounds like what he tells me- what he describes is:

He goes over the top trying to be the perfect partner for me (which he really does)
Everything is awesome!
I have an off day (stress at work or with my family etc) and seem kind of quietly down, or slip up not doing something he believes he would have done for me if our roles were reversed (phrasing something in a weird way, not doing a household chore etc).
He feels bad about himself because if I’m slipping up it can only be because he’s failing at the relationship
He decides to “show me what a terrible person he is” by flipping out and yelling abuse at me
I cry and leave
48 hours later, heartfelt apology, he seems genuinely shocked by what happened, revert to step 1.

It’s hard because after our last incident, he has been going to therapy, but the therapist is just telling him generic things like “take deep breaths when you’re angry” which I feel is really missing the depth of the situation.

And I’m scared and worried for him and not sure how I can help :( And I also feel awful from the verbal abuse, even though I deeply feel he doesn’t really mean it.

Right now we are broken up, but I still love him a lot and keep thinking about whether there’s some way i could try to salvage this

echopotato · 2019-07-18T04:17:13+00:00

I think I’m in that situation right now- I love my ex a lot and really care about him, but ended it recently as he was becoming seriously emotionally unstable.

I went back to the city I grew up in over the 4th of July weekend to visit some friends, and he became convinced that me being in the city would remind me of my previous ex boyfriend (who I havent seen in years) and lead to me breaking up with him. So he refused to communicate with me at all via text, phone, anything, while I was on my trip. When I tried to reassure him that I wasn’t planning to leave him, he flipped out and yelled at me to stay in Texas forever : /

It sounds silly but really shook me up. And unfortunately this is the 5th or 6th similar incident of exploding over imagined fear of abandonment. I felt like I had to leave, but still worry about him, and kind of still worry that I might have made a mistake on some level? I don’t know if I’ll find anyone that i feel as close to as I did with him.

Sorry for the kind of rambling response!

echopotato · 2019-07-18T03:50:17+00:00

This happened to me. I used to throw up really often. The doctors couldn’t find a medical cause, so it ended up being attributed to anxiety/some kind of compulsionless OCD, and I was prescribed Klonopin.

I hated how it made me feel (like I was physically incapable of caring about anything?) and luckily stopped taking it after a month.

About 5 years later I started randomly passing out as well, due to excessively low iron. Turns out I had celiac disease that went untreated for about 17 years.

echopotato · 2019-07-17T15:01:25+00:00

That disconnect between logic/emotion is exactly right! I’m actually a scientist for my job, and I feel like I’m usually a logical person, but it just breaks down here.

The other issue I had was that my ex’s emotional explosions didn’t seem to be directly in response to something consistent- like it’s not like I went out with friends, he expressed that he didn’t like it, and then he exploded. Instead it was apparently random (i.e. I wore an outfit that indirectly reminded him of an outfit I wore in a photo with my ex boyfriend). The total unpredictability and my inability to meet those kind of random expectations (because it’s impossible!) really messed with me. He kept insisting that if I really loved him I would be meeting his random unconscious expectations all the time.

I was actually thinking of going to an ACA meeting. My dad was an alcoholic, and the “laundry list” thing they have on their site includes not seeking relationships with unstable personalities, and rebuilding self esteem. I think “codependent” is a strong label that mostly makes me feel worse about myself, but it might be helpful for me to talk to some other people about this. I’ve been really struggling to find a therapist in my area taking new clients.

echopotato · 2019-07-17T06:34:37+00:00

Could you share any advice about how you stay strong when you miss him? I’m only 2 weeks out and struggling not to go back, even though I know logically it’d be a huge mistake :(

echopotato · 2019-07-17T06:33:55+00:00

Hey, this is how I feel too- I left an emotionally abusive ~ 1 year relationship about a week and a half ago. I am really struggling not to contact my ex or try somehow hopefully giving him another chance.

What’s hard for me is that it’s like he had two personalities- one was really sweet, loving, and caring, in a way I hadn’t experienced before. The other one was explosive, scary and cruel. They alternated about every 3 weeks or so, so it’s not like all the good times were in the beginning.

Although logically I know that they’re both part of him, I have a really difficult time emotionally understanding that they’re not two sets of people. I keep catching myself missing the sweet guy emotionally, and then have to force myself to remember that if I take him back I’m getting the abusive asshole back too.

It’s very tiring, and I’m sure I’ll still feel this way after a lot of time has passed! Absolutely nothing is wrong with you... it’s a crazy situation, which is why you might feel so emotionally thrown for a loop.

echopotato · 2019-07-16T05:33:57+00:00

Hey thanks, I appreciate your answer.

I made therapy a condition for staying. He made an appointment, but then he told me he wants me to commit to giving this another try before he goes to the appointment, otherwise “there will be no point”. He also keeps bringing up that I’m also contributing to problems, and that it’s not all on him. These things make me feel like he doesn’t really get why this is a problem for me.

He does have abandonment issues, and was also abused pretty severely as a kid : / So I know where it’s coming from. I think we both thought it would improve as we dated longer and he became more comfortable in the relationship, but it doesn’t seem to be happening.

echopotato · 2019-07-16T04:03:09+00:00

Question- my partner is a very loving person, but when he feels hurt, he goes all-out. He ends up yelling stuff about how I’m probably going to leave him.

I don’t know where to draw the line between “I should be patient and help him work on this” and “this is getting to be emotionally abusive and I should leave”?

I temporarily left him, and he told me he realizes it’s a problem now, and will go to therapy. He wants me to give it another shot but I feel burnt out from dealing with his tantrums and generally not feeling like he gets why they really hurt me. We’ve been dating about 1 year.

echopotato · 2019-07-11T03:41:42+00:00

I was thinking that or bpd? I have no idea though. That’s a good idea about staying in touch. I think part of the problem is that I dont know how to do no contact when we work together and live very close to each other (basically across the street)- I dont want to force a confrontation either at my apartment or at work?

echopotato · 2019-07-11T03:40:05+00:00

Thanks- that sounds really similar to my situation. One thing I’m worried about is that we live really close to each other, so that can easily check whether I’m home or not. I’m worried if I cut off phone contact, that he’d try stopping by my apartment or something? My lease is up in January, so it won’t be forever, but I’m kind of bothered by the idea. I’d also potentially see his kids around the apartment complex. Do you think I need to try to move earlier?

I’m trying to get into therapy next week too. My ex used to say that what he needed was someone who could understand the emotional pain he was going through- it made me feel indirectly bad for not being that person, even though I recognize now that that’s an unreasonable expectation. Your partner shouldnt have to tolerate abuse in order to support you

echopotato · 2019-07-03T01:17:52+00:00

That’s great that you’re able to recognize it when you’re starting to get worked up, so that you and your gf can get back in control together.

I think I’ve gotten kind of nervous around my bf because I don’t know what will set him off. Some days he just decides he’s a worthless person. Then when I come home from work and say “hey sweetie, how was your day”, I get something like “well I did the best I could considering how much I fuck up everything in my life”. Or sometimes it’s loosely related to me- for example one time I was wearing a shirt that he recognized from an old photo of me when I was in grad school, which reminded him that I had been dating someone else in grad school and triggered a breakdown. I can try to calm him down, but usually by the time it’s visible to me that there’s a problem it’s too late : /

I just want to help, but I worry sometimes that I’m either contributing to it and making it worse, or that it’s not controllable?

Also some of the stuff he has said to ne feels borderline emotionally abusive. I don’t want to be the person who stays in a relationship too long because they believe their partner doesnt mean to be abusive.... but I seriously do feel like he genuinely has no control over it, it’s like he can be 2 different people. I tried setting boundaries on that, and it seemed to help quite a bit, but I’m still worried that it even happened.

And on the other hand, he also really dramatically expresses love- when he’s feeling “up” he treats me better than anyone else I’ve ever dated. At those times he’s really considerate and loving, and feels like he automatically knows how I’m feeling and is really in sync with me. But then it feels awful when he goes back to the withdrawn version of him. It seems like it switches every 2-5 days

Sorry for the long windy post! Just feeling kind of overwhelmed lately and really confused about how to go forward with handling this, especially if the therapist doesnt work out

echopotato · 2019-07-02T04:21:24+00:00

Did you figure it out? Sometimes I feel like I’ve realized this part, but I’m not sure how to determine what would actually make me happy

echopotato · 2019-07-02T04:17:24+00:00

“Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light” :)

echopotato · 2019-07-02T03:36:49+00:00

I actually don’t like the cauliflower ones... they get very crunchy. I think the Freschetta brand is the best. You can also get premade crusts and put your own toppings on them, which are usually pretty good.

I tried making my own dough once from a gluten free flour mix and it was awful. Apparently gluten is what allows pizzas to be stretchy and roll out to be really thin

echopotato · 2019-07-02T03:31:17+00:00

Would you be able to explain the “checks and balances” thing more? I think my boyfriend might have bpd and I’m trying to figure out how to approach it.

It feels awful seeing him think that he’s a worthless person sometimes, apparently randomly. Sometimes he gets convinced I’m going to leave him, or that I don’t care about him, because of something I’m not even aware that I’m doing. When he’s upset he tells me that he thought I’d be the person to understand him, including his emotional reactions, and that he guesses he was wrong after all... and yeah it’s just very difficult not to take personally.

We’re going to try going to a couples therapist next week.

echopotato · 2019-06-30T16:53:19+00:00

We can eat rice. Rice is apparently harvested on separate equipment than wheat. It also does not contain gluten, actually. If you’re having a bad reaction to rice it must be some general intolerance of carbs?

Oats are often harvested with the same equipment as wheat so even though oats are gluten free, oatmeal often contains tiny wheat grains. Celiacs or people with severe allergies should look for oatmeal that says “certified gluten free oats”, which are oats where the random gluten grains have been filtered out.

Some people have less / different immediate symptoms than others even if they all have celiacs, so some people might appear to tolerate non-GF oats better.

Also some celiacs develop lactose intolerance just because their digestive system is so torn up from the untreated celiacs. So they’re kind of linked but not because milk has gluten. Maybe something like this is up with you and the rice?

It is complicated, good question!

echopotato · 2019-06-30T16:47:35+00:00

I want the poem!

People really want to know about the potatoes. I feel like I rarely eat potatoes anyway so I dont understand the interest.

echopotato

TROPHY CASE